The Beginning of a Sincere Heart

The fever is gone. Your nose is clear. The body aches are over. But the cough stayed. It is quiet during the day, then starts again at night — when you talk, when you breathe cold air. In the changing season, this happens to a great many people. It is not unusual. A cough that lingers for weeks after a cold has a name: a post-viral cough, or post-infectious cough. And it is medically common. The virus is gone. Why does the cough remain? Cold viruses are usually cleared from the body within a week. But the airway they passed through does not heal overnight. The lining of the airway stays swollen and sensitive, and the nerves that trigger coughing become hypersensitive. That is why small things that never bothered you before — cold air, dust, talking, laughing — can set off a coughing fit. There is another culprit: postnasal drip. The nose and sinuses, still inflamed from the cold, keep producing extra mucus, and it drains down the back of the throat, irritating it. That is why the...

If you get winded climbing the stairs or walking up a hill more than you used to, the usual explanation is, "That's just getting older." And it is true that the lungs age along with us. But not all breathlessness is simply age — and from the outside, there is no way to tell the difference. The lungs change as we age The lungs slowly lose their elasticity, so the force that pushes air out weakens, and the muscles used for breathing grow weaker too. The immune system also declines, making it easier for a simple cold to turn into bronchitis or pneumonia. So being somewhat more short of breath than in your younger years is natural. The trouble is that illness often hides behind that natural change. A leading example is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — COPD — in which the airways narrow and the air sacs are damaged, making it hard to breathe out. Seven in 10 people with COPD don't know they have it Taken together, studies suggest that about 70% of COPD worldw...